House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, drafted a four-page memo reportedly detailing allegations of wrongdoing at the FBI and Department of Justice in connection with the investigation into whatever it is that Donald Trump is accused of doing with Russia.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., wants a copy of that memo. Nunes will not give it to them.

He won’t give it to the FBI or the Justice Department, either.

The House Intelligence Committee voted to allow all House members to read the memo in a secure location, but senators were not invited.

This week, Nunes may hold a committee vote on whether to make the memo public, a prospect that alarmed the Department of Justice enough to prompt a letter to Nunes from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd.

“We believe it would be extraordinarily reckless for the committee to disclose such information publicly,” Boyd wrote, citing the risk of harm to national security and to ongoing investigations if the DOJ is not permitted to review the memo prior to its public release.

What’s going on here?

We don’t know if Nunes has found evidence of illegal actions by anyone at the FBI or DOJ, but if he had, this is what it would look like. He certainly wouldn’t share what he knows with the people who are about to be accused.

Boyd suggested that if Nunes won’t share the memo with the DOJ, he should at least give a copy of it to Michael Horowitz, the DOJ’s Inspector General. Horowitz is about to release a report on the actions taken by the DOJ and FBI during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and whether any decisions or actions were motivated by “improper considerations.”

It was the Horowitz investigation that turned up the text messages between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that showed intense bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton. As a result, Strzok and Page were removed from Robert Mueller’s team investigating the Russia whatever-it-is last July.

We still don’t know what it is. President Trump has been under this special counsel investigation for most of his presidency for no known crime. Is he accused of trying to obtain negative information about Hillary Clinton from Russia? Nobody needs Russia to find negative information on Hillary Clinton. A simple Google search is perfectly adequate, and it will run your printer out of toner.

Still, the idea persists that someone was in possession of Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails, and Trump himself said on the campaign trail that if Russia had them, he hoped they released them.

Efforts by investigators to recover Clinton’s 30,000 deleted “personal” emails were hampered by some really good data-protection techniques employed by her staff, like smashing her BlackBerrys with hammers.

In contrast, 50,000 missing texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were recovered in a matter of days after Inspector General Michael Horowitz took possession of at least four of their phones.

The Horowitz report, which was begun before Trump’s inauguration, will be released soon. The Nunes memo may be released even sooner.

The American people have the right to know if top U.S. law enforcement officials showed favoritism or prejudice in the conduct of federal investigations into people who were running for president of the United States.

And soon, we will.

Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. Reach her at Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter: @Susan_Shelley.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.